The Long Walk is a dystopian horror novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1979, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, and has seen several reprints since, as both paperback and hardback. In 2023, Centipede Press released the first stand-alone hardcover edition.[2]
Set in a future dystopian America, ruled by a totalitarian regime, the plot revolves around the contestants of a grueling annual walking contest. In 2000, the American Library Association listed The Long Walk as one of the 100 best books for teenage readers published between 1966 and 2000.[3]
While not the first of King's novels to be published, The Long Walk was the first novel he wrote, having begun it in 1966–67 during his freshman year at the University of Maine, some eight years before his first published novel, Carrie, was released in 1974.[4]
